The Period Piece: Britney Spears, Acer Arena, 17th November 2009

I seem to have created my own unintentional tradition: At the end of every year since 2005 I’ve found myself chanting endlessly at someone-or-thing inside a stadium-related venue. This year I found myself in the vacuous Acer Arena for teen heartthrob turned trainwreck turned “comeback queen” Britney Spears.

First, let’s get the frivolities out of the way:

• She sings about 3 out of 15 songs live, one of which is heavily autotuned
  • On that note, on said song (If You Seek Amy) she’s off tempo with a backing track. Not a band, but just a CD. Seriously.
• She kind of dances. And by “kind of” I really mean not at all. “Moving strategically” is the best term for it.
• There was no Oops… I Did It Again, Crazy, Lucky, My Perogative or Stronger. Gimme More is used as a dance interlude. In fact a large fraction of the show is spent doing magic tricks to no-name Circus tracks.
• All that said, it felt like most summer blockbusters: intellectually boring yet visually stimulating and entertaining constantly.
• My view of pop divas will be biased due to automatic comparison to the brilliance of Grace Jones live.

I guess if you got this far you are quite persistent, a big fan or some type of self-harming freak. At the end of the day, no one wants to here about the original mass produced superstar, whose manufactured spawn include everything from punk-chick P!nk to the Disney pop of Miley Cyrus.

I guess the big difference between Britney and her contemporaries is that her gap between initial success and contemporary comeback has been so large that it’s stunted her growth in the live arena. In the meantime, everyone from fellow musical classmates Beyonce and Justin Timberlake to performance artist Lady Gaga to veterans Madonna and Kylie Minogue are re-learning their skills in a world that demands ever-expensive live shows to be worth our penalty hours. Hell, even the evidently fragile Michael Jackson, who openly mimed his last major tour, was preparing to sing fifty shows straight live.

All this, and Britney is still performing the show she would have brought out in 1998, technological advancements notwithstanding. She’s yet to actually grow up professionally as a performer or a singer. What doesn’t alleviate my fears is just how many unconditionally adoring fans she has: this arena was packed to the rafters with costumed cougars and positive-slogan-donning teenage girls. Who needs progress when you can draw in the fans in through sheer presence?

She once sang about being “Not a girl, not yet a woman.” I wonder if she ever will be that “woman”.